I wake up with a needle in my arm and a dead man’s voice in my head.

The room is white. The walls hum. A machine counts down from 90.

“You are not the first,” the voice says. It speaks in Old Tagalag, but I understand. My teeth ache. My fangs drop.

The door slides open.

General Mateo Riel steps in wearing black-and-crimson armor, his neck wrapped in biometric bandages. He carries a silver case. No smile. No salute.

“You’re late,” he says.

“I was dead.”

“Not enough.”

He places the case on the table. Opens it. Inside: a glass vial of dark blood, swirling like smoke. My name is etched into the metal cap.

“This is your father’s heart-blood,” he says. “Drink it, and the Codex activates. Refuse, and the synthetic vitae fails in seven days. You’ll burn under moonlight. Turn blue. Die screaming.”

I look at the vial. My hand doesn’t shake. That’s wrong. I should be afraid.

Instead, I feel hunger.

“The explosion,” I say. “Who did it?”

“No one knows. Or no one lives.”

“And my mother?”

“Gone. Like the data cores. Like the truth.”

I stand. My muscles remember combat stances I’ve never learned.

“There’s another voice,” I say. “In my veins. It tells me not to trust my name.”

Riel doesn’t flinch.

“Then don’t trust it,” he says. “Trust power. Take the blood. Become what you were built to be.”

The machine hits zero. The lights dim. Red symbols flash on the wall—Crimson Accord insignia.

A chime echoes through the vents. Distant. Wrong.

Riel turns to leave.

“They’re coming,” he says. “Laya. They hit the outer gate.”

Footsteps rush outside. Alarms stay silent.

I pick up the vial. Cold. Alive.

It pulses once.

So do my memories.

Not mine.

Not yet.